The Midas touch Donald Trump’s self-enrichment has many precedents in political history — but it may yet test the tolerance of American voters for private gain while in public oice, write Harold James and JC de Swaan Financial Times UK 11 Jul 2026 JC de Swaan is a lecturer in the economics department at Princeton University and a partner at Cornwall Capital. Harold James is professor of history and international relations at Princeton University These days Donald Trump is a modern Midas, turning everything he touches into gold. His personal wealth accumulation while in oce is unparalleled in recent US history, as is the blurring of public and private interests during his presidency. Barely a month passes without fresh reports of some new domestic or foreign scheme for self-enrichment. Sovereigns and dictators have always blended personal interest with those of the nation — that is, in a sense, their prerogative. Liberal democracies exist precisely to prevent such amalgamati...
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The good, bad and ugly of AI’s economic impact AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo LONDON, July 9 (Reuters Breakingviews) - A year ago Ford Motor (F.N) CEO Jim Farley warned “artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.”. In February Mustafa Suleyman, head of Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) AI unit, upped the ante by predicting that most white-collar work would be fully automated within 12 to 18 months. Sceptics may dismiss these prophets of doom as riddled with self-interest. Yet signs that AI is disrupting human labour markets are everywhere. In March, self-driving robotaxi company Waymo announced that it had hit more than 500,000 paid rides per week. Last month the United Kingdom unveiled a new Defence Investment Plan “a seismic shift to smaller, cheaper, uncrewed and autonomous systems” driven by computers’ comprehensive ...
The superpower of public equity Financial Times UK 11 Jul 2026 Robert Buckland Robert Buckland is senior adviser at Engine AI and Invest a, and former chief global equity strategist at Citigroup Investors have been attracted to private markets by higher expected returns and lower reported volatility, but it’s often hard to get your money out. This implicit liquidity sacrifice has reached its limi For much of the 1980 sand 1990s, public equity markets seemed unbeatable. They offered investors strong returns and generous liquidity. They offered companies cheap capital and a powerful acquisition currency. Equitisation was everywhere. Governments privatised. Mutuals de mutual is ed. Companies rushed to IP O. No other asset class could compete. Then came the 2000-03 bear market. Investors discovered that liquidity had a down side. With asset prices continuously marked-to-market, losses were pain fully visible. Pension funds, insurance companies, retail investors and regulators were scar re...
Hedge your bets to prepare for a perilous summer Financial Times UK 11 Jul 2026 Katie Martin katie.martin@ft.com Financial markets are rolling into the summer with a nearperfect set-up for some outbreaks of madness. The summer months are always a fertile time for market shakeups. When senior traders and investors head to the beach, often leaving a more junior crew behind, trading volumes tend to shrink, and the lubrication behind markets evaporates. Gaps open up where lots of tradeable prices used to be, making it easier for stocks, bonds, currencies and everything in betwteen to swing around based on little to no new information. One lively recent example of this was in 2024 when a modest disappointment on some US ination data hit the dollar unusually hard, whacked up the yen and hammered tech stocks. It quite quickly got out of hand, with Japanese stocks falling 12 per cent in a day and wild talk of emergency US rate cuts. This year, stocks are entering what Emmanuel Cau at Barclays ...
Tropical nights come to Europe The biggest rise in extreme tem per at ures is not in the day time. Night-time heat is harder to mit ig ate, with increas -ingly severe con sequences for health and eco nomic reper cus sions set to get worse. Financial Times Europe11 Jul 2026By Attracta Mooney, Nas sos Styl i anou and Jana Tausch in ski As Lorna Pow ell, an NHS urgent care doc tor in Lon don, watched a weather fore castfor extreme heat across the UK in June, one pre dic tion in par tic u lar caught heratten tion. Met eor o lo gists warned that the Brit ish cap ital could exper i ence a slew ofso-called trop ical nights, in which tem per at ures remain above 20C. The pre dic tioncame true: last month Lon don endured a record-equalling five con sec ut ive suchnights. For Pow ell, that meant more patients. The UK is far from alone as cli mate change drives more extreme weather. Across the world, the hot test nights are warm ing at a faster rate than the hot testdays — with increas ingly sever...
Mass immigration is not the silver bullet economists think it is Financial Times Europe11 Jul 2026The writer is an FT con trib ut ing editor and chief eco nom ist at Amer ican Com pass Oren Cass When enter ing debates about immig ra tion, eco nom ists have often checked theircred ib il ity at the door. This hap pens espe cially when the ques tion is immig ra tion oflarge num bers of unskilled work ers (attract ing the globe’s top tal ent is a sep ar ateissue). Com mon sense and mar ket dynam ics sug gest that this causes job qual ity forexist ing work ers to decline and pub lic ser vices to suf fer. Yet argu ments to the con -trary have poured forth from eco nom ists, con veni ently coin cid ing with the self-interest of employ ers depend ent on large pools of cheap labour and pro gress iveseager to square their oppos i tion to restric tions on immig ra tion with their sup portfor worker power. The cur rent is now revers ing. On both sides of the Atlantic, left-of-centre polit ic...
Why AI could be a financial ‘sludge’ buster Financial Times Europe11 Jul 2026Gil lian Tett gil lian.tett@ft.com Why are so many people in Amer ica (and else where) so neg at ive on AI? There aremany reas ons: hor ror at tech com pan ies’ excess power; fears about impend ing joblosses; alarm about AI’s impact on men tal health, energy and the envir on ment. Then there is a prac tical issue. While AI can the or et ic ally deliver mir acles — in lifesci ences, say — few people have yet seen much tan gible improve ment in their ownlives. Win-wins are prov ing elu sive. Tech ies and gov ern ments are now try ing to address this pub lic rela tions prob lem.In the UK, for instance, Doug Gurr, former chair of the Alan Tur ing Insti tute, tellsme that the Met Office is revolu tion isingflood fore casts with AI, and that the Nat -ural His tory Museum can now identify dino saur bones 30,000 times faster. Jur as sicPark is optim ised. But fin ance might soon pro duce another win-win too. As Micha...